The company knew your name before the helicopter landed. It had a claims adjuster, a doctor, and a lawyer working on your file before you were discharged. A Houston Jones Act lawyer evens that out, and the sooner one is involved, the less of the record gets written without you.
The Calderon Law Firm represents seamen injured on vessels working the Port of Houston, the Ship Channel, and the Gulf of Mexico. Call +1 (346) 999-5673 any hour.
Our Houston maritime injury attorneys handle Jones Act and offshore injury claims for deckhands, tankermen, drilling crew, engineers, and galley staff across the Gulf Coast.
Should You Hire a Lawyer for a Jones Act Claim?
If your employer has already offered maintenance payments or asked you to sign anything, yes. A Jones Act claim is a lawsuit against your employer, not a benefits application, and employers defend it accordingly from day one.
The imbalance is the reason to call. Vessel owners and their insurers handle these cases constantly. Most injured seamen handle exactly one.
Why Gulf Coast Seamen Bring Us Their Cases
We are a Houston firm run by a Houston lawyer, and maritime clients reach the same team from the first call to the last check. Nothing gets routed to an out-of-state intake center.
Jose Calderon founded The Calderon Law Firm after several years inside large Texas personal injury practices, having concluded he could represent working people better on his own terms. 5% of attorneys statewide, and to The National Trial Lawyers Top 40 Under 40 by his second year of practice.
Best Lawyers named the firm to its Ones to Watch list for 2027.
What that means for a Jones Act file:
- Status gets settled first. Whether you qualify as a seaman drives the deadline, the remedies, and the value. We resolve it with records in the first weeks rather than arguing it at a deposition a year later.
- Maintenance gets challenged early. Companies commonly pay a daily rate pulled from an old contract instead of what Houston housing actually costs. That figure is negotiable, and we treat it as such.
- Bilingual from intake forward. Jose is a first-generation son of Mexican immigrants and fluent in Spanish, and so is our case management team. Gulf crews are bilingual, and so is our file handling.
- Trial preparation is the leverage. Jose has argued before the Texas Tenth Court of Appeals in a live session. Cases settle better when the other side believes the file is going in front of a jury.
Recognitions describe how a firm works. They do not predict any particular outcome.
What Does the Jones Act Actually Give an Injured Seaman?
Three things ordinary workers' compensation does not: the right to sue your employer for negligence, the right to hold the vessel owner responsible for an unsafe vessel, and the right to living expenses and medical care while you recover, paid regardless of fault.
The negligence standard is unusually favorable. Under 46 U.S.C. Section 30104, a seaman generally needs to show the employer's failure played some part in causing the injury, which is a lighter burden than Texas negligence law imposes on land-based cases.
You can learn more about how the Jones Act works for injured seamen in Texas, including the seaman status test and the three-year filing deadline.
Employer negligence
Short-crewing a job, skipping training, running a watch schedule that produces fatigue, or sending a hand to do a two-person task with worn gear are all failures that belong to the company rather than the worker.
Unseaworthiness
This claim runs against the vessel owner and does not require proving anyone was careless. A jammed winch, a corroded ladder, an untrained crewmate, or a missing safety line may each make a vessel legally unfit for its purpose.
Maintenance and cure
Owed from the moment you are injured in the service of the vessel until you reach maximum medical improvement. Cutting it off without a supporting medical opinion may create additional liability for the employer.
Which Houston Maritime Workers Qualify for Jones Act Remedies?
Seaman status depends on your connection to a vessel in navigation, not your job title. Crew assigned to towboats, barges, offshore supply vessels, liftboats, crew boats, tankers, and mobile offshore drilling units frequently qualify.
Workers on fixed platforms, dock workers, and shore-based ship repairers usually do not, and instead fall under a federal benefits program administered by the Department of Labor. Dock and harbor workers are typically covered by the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act, which carries a much shorter deadline.
Mixed assignments are the hard cases. A hand who splits hitches between a barge and a yard, or between a liftboat and a platform, may or may not clear the threshold depending on what the timekeeping records show. We pull those records before anyone files anything.
Not sure which law covers you? Call +1 (346) 999-5673
What If the Vessel Owner and Your Employer Are Different Companies?
That arrangement is standard in the Gulf, and it usually works in your favor. Crew are often supplied by one company while the vessel belongs to another, which means two defendants and two insurance policies rather than one.
The claims divide along predictable lines. The Jones Act negligence claim follows your employer, since that is who owed you a safe workplace and adequate crew. The unseaworthiness claim follows the vessel owner, since that is who is responsible for the condition of the boat and its gear.
Companies in this position frequently point at each other, and each will argue the other had control. That argument is useful to us. Contracts, charter agreements, and bareboat provisions determine who was actually responsible, and we request them early rather than accepting either company's characterization.
The practical risk is settling with one and releasing both by accident. Releases drafted by a vessel owner's counsel are often written broadly, which is a reason to have any document reviewed before signing.
What Is a Houston Jones Act Case Worth?
Value comes down to earning capacity far more often than to medical bills. Offshore pay includes hitch premiums, overtime, and per diem that a base wage summary does not capture, and an insurer valuing your claim from a W-2 will undercount it badly.
| Component | What drives the number |
| Past lost earnings | Actual hitch history, not scheduled hours |
| Future earning capacity | Whether you can return to vessel work at all |
| Past and future medical care | Surgeries already done plus what the treating physician projects |
| Physical impairment | Grip strength, lifting limits, balance, climbing ability |
| Pain and mental anguish | Documented treatment, including anxiety about returning to sea |
| Maintenance shortfall | The gap between what was paid and actual living costs |
Back, shoulder, and knee injuries carry a particular problem in this trade. A deckhand who cannot pull wire or climb a barge ladder is not going back to the deck, and the shore jobs available afterward often pay a fraction of vessel wages. Documenting that gap takes vocational evidence, not a doctor's note.
Comparative fault applies, so recovery may be reduced by your share of responsibility. It is not a bar. That is exactly why employers push for a recorded statement in the first week, before anyone has explained to the injured worker how those answers will be used at a deposition two years later.
How We Handle Your Case After You Call
Our approach on maritime files is front-loaded, because offshore evidence has a short life.
- Same-week preservation. Letters go to the employer and the vessel owner demanding retention of logs, engine data, safety meeting sign-in sheets, maintenance records, and crew certifications.
- Status documentation. We request crew change sheets, dispatch logs, payroll codes, and timekeeping data covering the year before your injury.
- Medical independence. We help you establish care with a physician of your own choosing rather than the company clinic, and we address maintenance and cure disputes immediately.
- Regulatory records. Any Coast Guard marine casualty report or offshore incident filing on the event gets pulled and compared against the company's version.
- Valuation and filing. Once your treating physician can speak to permanence, we price the file and pursue the employer and vessel interests together instead of taking the first offer that arrives.
We also represent workers across the broader Gulf industry as Houston offshore injury lawyers serving workers across the Gulf Coast, including rig and platform crews whose claims arise under different rules.
FAQ for Houston Jones Act Lawyers
The company sent me to its own doctor. Can I see someone else?
Generally yes. A seaman has the right to choose a treating physician for cure purposes, and company clinics have an obvious interest in returning you to duty. If you have been told there is no choice, that is worth a call before your next appointment. Continuing to treat only with the company physician tends to produce a record built around a quick return to work.
Can I be fired for filing a Jones Act claim?
Retaliation against a seaman for pursuing an injury claim is prohibited, though companies rarely call it that. What we see instead is quiet non-re-crewing, reassignment to a lower-paying vessel, or a schedule that dries up. Keep every dispatch message, crew list, and text from the weeks after your injury, because those documents are how retaliation gets proven.
Does it matter that my accident happened outside Texas waters?
Often not. Maritime claims may frequently be brought where the employer does business, and most inland and Gulf operators have a substantial Houston presence. Venue affects case value, so it is one of the first things we evaluate rather than an afterthought.
What if I have a prior back injury on record?
Expect the defense to lead with it. A pre-existing condition does not defeat a Jones Act claim, and Texas and federal law both recognize that a defendant is responsible for aggravating an existing injury. The evidence that matters is your functional baseline in the months before the incident, which is why prior records and work history get gathered early rather than avoided.
How long does a Jones Act case usually take?
Straightforward cases with clear seaman status and a defined injury often resolve within a year. Cases where the employer contests status, or where surgery and recovery extend the medical picture, commonly run eighteen months to three years.
The single largest variable is when your treating physician can speak to whether the injury is permanent, because no case can be valued fairly before that point. We do not push clients to settle early to close a file, and we tell you honestly where yours sits on that timeline.
My employer already paid some medical bills. Did I accept a settlement?
Paying for a cure is an obligation, not a settlement, and accepting it does not waive anything. Signing a release is different. If you signed a document at a clinic, a hotel, or a port office, bring it in.
Not every release given to an injured seaman is enforceable, and Jones Act law is protective on this point, and releases obtained from an injured seaman are reviewed by courts more closely than ordinary contracts.
The Hitch Ends. The Injury Does Not.
Crews rotate, vessels get sold and renamed, and the people who saw what happened move to another company by spring. Meanwhile the file the employer is building has been growing since the day you were hurt, and none of it was written with you in the room.
You can start building your own version of that record today, at no cost and with no fee unless we recover for you. Call The Calderon Law Firm at +1 (346) 999-5673 or request a case review online. Someone answers around the clock, in English or Spanish.